


Touch

by supermatique



Series: Touch/Tether [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-18 22:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2365046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supermatique/pseuds/supermatique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Sameen Shaw is the best at what she does, until Samantha Groves, aka Root, comes along. Ethics — and superiors — dictate that they eliminate each other, but the two find a kindred spirit in one another.  Playing a cat-and-mouse game in the shadow of their respective agencies, Root and Shaw have to decide whether to work with or destroy one another to ensure their own survival.</p><p>In which Shaw still works for the ISA, and Root plays by her own rules as a Decima agent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Madrid

**Author's Note:**

> My brain wanted a Romeo and Juliet AU. This isn't really it, but it has guns and stuff, so.
> 
> Muchas gracias to deej for giving each bit a read through and cheerleading as I go along.

The party was an appallingly grand event, with all kinds of political and industry royalty hob-nobbing with one another, babbling away in a mixture of Spanish, English, and German. Shaw made the cursory round across the ballroom with a tray of champagne, itching to down every third glass herself.

She was pissed. The mission was meant to be a stakeout at the number's Frankfurt office, a simple dispatch when he was alone and a flight back to Washington the next day. Control had intervened at the eleventh hour, pushing the schedule up by twelve hours, which was how they were now in Madrid of all places and Shaw was posing as wait staff where she would much rather have poisoned everyone instead of serve them.

“Cole,” she complained as she shouldered past a dancing couple, where the man was stepping all over his partner's toes, “why are we here again?”

“Because Control sent us,” Cole replied patiently, just as he had for the past few hours.

A woman in a terribly loud red dress with an inappropriately high thigh slit bumped into her. She smiled sweetly at Shaw and mouthed sorry.  Shaw ground her teeth. “Well, Control should know better than to dress me up like a penguin and send me to a room full of people I'd wanna shoot on a good day.”

Cole laughed. “But you've got such a lovely bedside manner, doctor.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shaw muttered. “Where is Berger, anyway? It's rude to be late to your own party.”

“Fashionably late?” Cole suggested. “When you're the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation...”

A man jostled her as he headed for the rest rooms and Shaw slammed her service tray down at the end of the buffet table instead of breaking his leg. She scabbed a handful of shrimp cocktail puffs and headed out for some fresh air, ending up on the balcony, which overlooked a garden and a courtyard below. It was a nice garden, the courtyard spacious and very easy to kill someone in, replete with marble sculptures of Greco-Roman figures and fantasy creatures. Spotlights lined the edge of the paved walkway and cast slivers of light at their feet.

The sky was clear, cloudless and starry. It was a beautiful night. The full moon shone a faint glow across the smooth granite and polished marble. If she were anyone else, Shaw thought, this would be the life.

She leaned with her back against the balustrade and checked her watch, adjusting her stupid uniform as she positioned herself with a view of the whole ballroom interior. She and Cole weren't the team that did the undercover work to gently pull teeth for intel, she fumed; they were the ones who quietly blew shit up in the dead of night and got the hell out of there. She shook her head and viciously chomped down on the last of the pastry.

Her earpiece crackled. “Berger just entered the building,” Cole reported in her ear. “Two bodyguards.”

“Copy. I still think this is a stupid idea,” Shaw muttered under her breath.

“Okay,” Cole said, humouring her. “You can tell Control.”

“Just patch me through to her hologram.” Shaw scanned the room and picked up Berger, a German entrepreneur with ties to a neo-Nazi terrorist group. “All right, I got eyes. I'm going in.”

“Good luck,” Cole laughed, and Shaw only huffed in reply.

She had her hand on the slider when all of a sudden there was someone blocking her way. Shaw looked up to see the woman in the red dress standing in front of her. She was tall, taller than Shaw — not difficult, granted — and her smile was now oddly sharp, her eyes intense and piercing.

“Can I get a refill, please?” she asked, holding out an empty champagne flute. Shaw instinctively accepted it, then rolled her eyes at herself.

“Refills are inside,” she said shortly, trying to track Berger over the woman's shoulder. He was shaking hands with another man, the two of them greeting each other like old friends.

“Oh,” the woman said, and she drew back slightly. Shaw barely had a second to react when the Taser appeared out of nowhere, the tiny laser sight a stark red against her white shirt. The woman fired, and the probes latched directly onto Shaw's stomach. There was a delicate tinkling sound as the flute fell from her hand and shattered upon the granite.

It was too late for her to do anything. She bit her tongue trying not to cry out and dropped like a rock, the pain raging through her locked muscles as the woman caught her under the arms and hauled her over to the side of the balcony, out of sight of the party.

“Sorry, but I just can't let you have all the fun.” The woman smiled at Shaw apologetically and Shaw wanted to punch her in the face, but all she could do was stare at the marble sculptures in the garden impassively witness her incapacitation.

“Who are you?” she struggled to say, her tongue heavy and words slurred. Cole was cautiously checking in into her ear.

“You're asking the wrong question, Agent Shaw,” the woman said as she dropped Shaw on the ground, keeping the Taser connected as she pulled out a gun. “But you can call me Root.”

 _This is so not how I thought I'd go out_ , Shaw thought, as Root raised the gun and brought the barrel down with a solid  _crack_  over her temple.

.

She recovered to Cole hollering frantically in her ear. “I'm here,” she grunted, ducking her head to make it stop spinning. She put two fingers to her temple; it came away wet.  She grit her teeth and took stock of herself — body: fine, if not a little jolty, still; head: getting there. Not a concussion, but definitely a headache or two.

“Shaw, thank god,” Cole barked down the line. “What the hell happened?”

“Third party after Berger.” Shaw hauled herself upright, ignoring the intense urge to throw up, discreetly entering the ballroom.  Nothing seemed to be amiss, but there was no sign of Berger or Root as she scanned the room. “He's gone.”

“Hang on, I'm still tracking him,” Cole reported tersely.  “There must be a blind spot, but... all right, got them. East end stairwell.”

“Fuck,” Shaw muttered, already breaking into a run. She distantly heard the catering manager calling her name as she passed the kitchen but ignored him as she stumbled out of the ballroom and into the foyer of the hotel's conference floor.

The east stairwell was down the end of the hallway and around a corner leading towards the gymnasium and smaller breakout rooms. Berger's bodyguards were lying just inside of the fire door stripped of their weapons— still alive, but just barely. Shaw drew her gun from her ankle holster and paused at the top of the stairs, listening intently. She couldn't hear anything. She raced down the stairs and finally spotted Berger and the woman just exiting the service door.

“Hey,” she shouted down, leaping over the banister. “That's my guy you've got there.”

Root barely paused, but her gaze lingered on Shaw and she smiled, baring her teeth as she raised a firearm. “Not any more, Sameen,” she sang, and fired two rounds that whizzed well above Shaw's head as she hustled Berger out in front of her.

The door swung closed just as Shaw fired back, the gunshots echoing up and around the flights of stairs as Root hustled Berger into a waiting black SUV and screeched away into the night.

.

“Root, aka Samantha Groves,” Cole told Shaw when she stormed back into the van. “Freelance computer hacker and contractor. Last known chatter had her working for Decima.”

Shaw stared at Cole in disbelief. “That psychopathic bitch is Decima?”

Cole shrugged. “That's what I got.”

Shaw hunched her shoulders and glared at the picture Cole pulled up. A smug, self-assured woman stared back at her. Her fingers itched and she clenched them into a fist. Cole wouldn't appreciate her trashing his surveillance babies.

“That's not Decima's style,” she said, keeping her fists still on her thighs. Decima tended to shoot first and talk later, if at all. The fact that Groves was masquerading as a guest, using a Taser instead of a gun and left her conscious while she made off with their mark was way outside of their standard operating procedure. “What the hell would they want with Berger?”

“No connection just yet,” Cole murmured in reply, fingers flying frantically over the keyboard as he accessed multiple government databases at once, scanning various feeds for new intel. “Berger trained as an architect in Frankfurt before founding Berger Enterprises—”

“I thought Berger specialised in computer systems engineering,” Shaw frowned.

“He does. He made the switch after his company bought over a telecommunications startup and then finished his Masters at Aachen.”

“Okay.” Shaw leaned back in her chair, puzzled. “Well, whatever it is, we gotta get to Berger tonight. Control wants him gone”—she checked the time on Cole's screen—“in two hours.”

.

Berger was just about as good as gone anyway. He had apparently checked out of his hotel room half an hour ago, but when Shaw snuck up to the seventeenth floor suite, all his belongings were still there.

“There's nothing here,” Shaw said, as she rifled through Berger's suitcase and searched the room. Her gaze fell onto the safe bolted to the floor of the laundry cupboard, a cheap digital model that was really just a glorified metal box. Shaw got into it easily, but it was empty. “Anything that would've been important's gone.”

“I'm getting nothing from the city's surveillance,” Cole said, and Shaw could almost hear him shaking his head in frustration.

Shaw eyed the wastebasket in the corner, very much wanting to kick it across the room. She cursed, giving Berger's things one last distasteful glance. “Fine,” she said. “Get Wilson on the line. I'm headed your way.”

.

Wilson didn't sound too surprised when they reported back over the encryption feed in Cole's hotel room. “We thought something like this would happen,” he said. “A Decima associate was in touch with Berger last week.”

 _Unbelievable_. “And you didn't think to tell us this?” Shaw fumed, pacing the length of the floor.

“We couldn't verify it until the last minute. It's why Control pushed the schedule up.”

“Well, they've got him now,” Shaw said, throwing her hands up in the air. “What next?”

“You guys did what you could.” Wilson's tone was calm and even, and Shaw wanted to shoot the receiver. “Foster's rerouted your flights to D.C. You leave tomorrow morning as planned. We'll take it from here.”

.

Shaw was still furious when she went to bed that night. It wasn't so much about losing Berger; she'd lost very few numbers in her time, but she never lost sleep about any of them. She got the numbers, did her job, and knew her limitations.

(Not that there were many of them.)

No, Shaw thought as she methodically stripped one of her guns down to clean, she was pissed off about Root. She tenderly ran solvent down the action and replayed their meeting. The bump in the ballroom, the apologetic smile. The champagne flute catching the light as Root had shoved it into her hand. The Taser sight, an accusing finger pointing at her stomach. The almost fond look when Root whipped Shaw with her gun and stalked like a cat back into the ballroom.

Shaw put her firearm back together when she was done and polished it slowly, holding it up to the light to check for smudges and dirt. She definitely wasn't thinking about the smirk on Root's face and how the faint light cast harsh shadows over the lines of her shoulder as she fired at Shaw in the stairwell.

Eventually, Shaw fell asleep. She was jolted awake by something, she wasn't sure what, but instinctively reached for the gun underneath her pillow as she sat slowly up in bed.

“Please, don't shoot,” a lilting voice said laughingly in the darkness, and Shaw immediately knew who it was.

“If you don't want to get shot you better get the hell out of my room,” she said. She switched on the small lamp on the wall to the right of the bed, and in the small room the low amber glow illuminated the figure leaning against the wall about five feet away from her.

Root had changed out the red dress and into black slacks and a simple dark blazer. It suited her, Shaw noted absently. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that Root's arms were crossed, her posture casual and relaxed. No sign of the Taser, but then again, Shaw hadn't spotted it last time. She turned the safety off just in case.

Root pouted. “That's no way to treat a guest.”

“Yes, but you're not a guest, are you,” Shaw growled. “ _Guests_  are generally invited.”

Root pushed herself off the wall and approached the bed, hands held out in front of her and palms outward to show they were empty. “I just thought we could get to know each other better,” she said, halting when she hit the bed. She lifted a knee and Shaw felt the mattress shift as Root leaned her weight onto it. “Don't you want that, Sameen?”

“If you come any closer,” Shaw warned, “I'm going to blow out your kneecaps.”

“No you're not,” Root said confidently, and Shaw hated that she was right. "You would've shot me by now if you were ever going to."

“Keep talking and you might just make me change my mind.”

“Hmm.” Root's mouth quirked up at the corners as if she knew the threat was empty. "As much as I'd love some action,” she said, her words dripping with innuendo, “I'd also really appreciate it if you put your gun away. Please?” She half-knelt on the bed, bracing herself with her hands flat on the mattress. This close, Shaw could hear the rustle of her clothing against the sheets, could hear Root's breathing — and it was too steady, too controlled, like something was waiting to uncoil and could at any moment.

 _The brachial stun is the most effective strike at this range_ , her mind telegraphed to her hand. She tightened her grip on her gun to stop the muscle twitch as Root crawled closer. “What if I don't want to,  _Samantha_?”

“You looked me up?” Root asked, straightening a little and sounding inordinately pleased. “I'm flattered.”

“Don't be,” Shaw retorted. “I just like to know who's fucking with my missions.”

Root chuckled faintly. “Ah, your precious missions. Research gives you numbers, right? And they're never wrong?” She straightened fully this time and pinned Shaw with a fervent gaze. Her eyes were bright, almost fanatical. “What if I told you there was a cold war that's already started, and Research didn't have a clue?”

This time, Shaw did move. She thought about Cole, and his circumspect interest in Aquino after the fact. His questions about Research even though they'd never been led astray. A fist of foreboding gripped her sternum and she whipped the sheets away, kicking out with her left foot and connecting solidly with Root's ribcage. As Root grunted, losing her balance, Shaw grabbed her by the collar and threw her down, straddling Root and pinning her to the mattress with a knee against her solar plexus.

“I think I'm close to changing my mind," Shaw threatened, emphasising her point by jabbing the muzzle of her handgun into Root's clavicle. "Tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you now and get it over with."

Root leered up at Shaw even as she grimaced. “You know why,” she murmured, running a finger down the barrel of the gun. “We're the same, you and I. Soldiers working for an invisible cause. The only thing that separates us is the name on our uniform.”

She was crazy, Shaw realised, as she gave Root one last shove and let her go. She put the safety back on and tucked her gun into the waistband of her underwear as she glared down at Root. “We're nothing alike.”

Root sat up, massaging her collarbone. “Oh, Shaw,” she began, swinging her legs off the bed and straightening her clothes. Then, she cocked her head slightly to the right, as if listening intently to someone in her ear. “Oops, gotta go,” she said. “I really enjoyed chatting with you, Sameen. It'll be our little secret, okay?”

“Hey,” Shaw barked as Root reached the door, her curiosity getting the better of her, “what does Decima want with Berger?”

Root hummed. “I wouldn't worry about Berger,” she said with a small smirk, making a show of inspecting her cuticles. “I took care of him.”

And with that, Root practically trounced out the door, flashing Shaw a giddy little smile as she gently closed the door behind her.

Shaw went back to bed, more than a little unsettled. She stared up at the ceiling, watching the dust motes play inside the low lambence of the lamp, and counted the seconds until her heartbeat calmed.

.

The news broke in the morning. Not in print, because the incident had only been found at dawn, but it made it to the breakfast news and online editorials. Berger's car was involved in a fatal crash not far from the city centre, heading towards the airport. The car had impacted at such high speed that it exploded, with forensics only able to recover a few teeth to check dental records against. A ransom attempt gone wrong, was the current speculation, after Berger had been taken from his party.

Shaw knew at once that it was a cover up, an extremely clumsy one at that. Too much coverage, too much of a mess to clean up. She wondered what Root was playing at with such a high profile dispatch.

“Kinda weird, huh,” Cole said as he and Shaw sat in the hotel's dining room for breakfast. “Wonder what the point of that little exercise was.”

Shaw only grunted in reply. She hadn't slept well after Root had left last night, and trying to figure out just exactly what Cole was asking there was giving her a headache. On the television, the newscaster reported that more information would follow as the case developed.

“Amateur,” she muttered, stabbing discontentedly at her banana and nutella crepe.


	2. Portland

_We can't let him live._

_Other... ways._

_Isn't that why you wanted me? To be the hand of god?_

_Not... god._

_He will do what they want. He has nothing left. They will let you burn._

_Please. I don't know what you want from me._

_Fire... At... dawn._

* * *

 

Life went back to normal almost immediately after they landed to Washington. Wilson had a new number for them once they landed and from then on she and Cole were kept busy within domestic borders. There weren't any other curveballs like Madrid, and Shaw thrived back in her element.

She'd almost forgotten about Berger, but not about Root. For the first two weeks back on American soil, she'd kept her eyes and ears half-open for any updates about Berger, finding a pseudo-professional interest coupled with the schadenfreude of Root screwing up after having one-upped her. She thought there would've been the inevitable exposure of the cover up, it was that clumsy, but apart from Wilson clapping her on the shoulder and Hersch giving her an indifferent shrug when they passed in the hallway one time, it was as if what happened was no big deal at all.

Shaw guessed it suited her fine, if she forced herself not to think about it. She certainly wasn't used to losing—if what happened could be called losing—but she knew that the ISA therapist would probably try and psychoanalyse why she was so bothered about it if she said anything, so Shaw didn't gripe to Wilson any more than she had done in Madrid already. But really, generally, wasn't it just common sense that operatives could do their job better when they were privy to all the information necessary to execute the mission? Such as when there were Decima agents after the target as well, that would've been useful.

Anyway, Shaw thought, as she kicked a would-be bomber behind the knee and clouted him in the base of the neck with her rifle stock as he crumpled to the ground, it was all moot now. Berger was dead, that was what Control wanted, and that was that.

.

It wasn't until nearly a month afterward that Shaw saw Root again. She and Cole were in Portland, this time, and Shaw was mildly insulted by having been assigned the banality of sniping an embassy secretary who was moonlighting by selling state secrets to an underground extremist group.

“That was too easy,” she remarked as she packed up her rifle and walked away from the panicked aftermath.

“You've been difficult to please lately,” Cole commented over the comm. “Do you need a vacation?”

Shaw snorted. “What we just did was a vacation. I want something a little more challenging,” she said. “Like Berlin, you know? That was fun.”

She could picture Cole's frown as he said, “We almost got killed in Berlin.”

“Exactly. Is that so much to ask?”

Cole was the one who snorted this time. “Well, next time you have a death wish just make sure I'm out of the blast zone, okay?”

Shaw chuckled as she headed for the meeting point. She knew Cole would cut off his right hand for her, but of course if you'd said that to either of them they'd shoot you in the face.

She was two blocks away from the van when a willowy figure emerged from a service lane not a hundred metres ahead of her, catching her attention. There was something familiar about the casual yet assured swagger as the woman walked down the street with her hands in the pockets of her coat. Shaw was still trying to get a fix on it when the woman turned her head slightly, and in the reflection of an abandoned shopfront revealed her face.

Shaw recognised her instantly, then. The cheekbones, the nose, the small smirk lingering at the corner of her mouth, they were filed in the top shelf of her memory. Out of some foreign compulsion Shaw slung her duffel over her shoulder and broke into a dead sprint. “Hey!” she called, catching up easily.

Root turned, and Shaw found that Root was just as she had remembered—that her memory hadn't burnished the light in her eyes, but that they were really that bright and animated. “Hello, Sameen,” Root said, smiling pleasantly at Shaw like she wasn't surprised at all, which was probably true. “Long time no see.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Groves?” Shaw said, falling into step with the other woman.

“Taking in the sights. Can't a girl just walk down the street?”

Shaw glared at Root. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

Root hadn't stopped walking and Shaw found herself just following, so they were now heading towards the Willamette river rather than towards Chinatown, where Cole was waiting for her. He would soon be wondering what was keeping her, Shaw knew, but she shoved the thought away at the back of her mind.

“Pritchard could've been a problem,” Root said quietly, after they had been walking for a while in silence.

Shaw scoffed. “What, so you were making sure I was okay?”

“Something like that.”

“You always this patronising?” Shaw asked, clenching her fists to keep them still. “That was the easiest number Research ever gave us.”

“Don't you think a little too easy?” Root shot back. “You said so yourself.”

Shaw stopped dead in her tracks. “You were listening?” she asked, incredulous.

“Not me,” Root said vaguely. Shaw wanted to strike out at how maddeningly calm Root was being, as if eavesdropping on secure communication systems were an everyday sort of thing.

 _Well_ , she thought with distaste, _maybe it is_.

They were approaching the bridge, now, cyclists whizzing past them to make turns onto it. The butt of her rifle was poking into her rib. Shaw shifted the weight and asked, “What did Decima want with Pritchard?”

She had been expecting a blasé and noncommittal reply, but not the fleeting shadow that flashed across Root's face and turned down that pretty mouth, but Root quickly schooled her features back into neutrality. “Nothing of import,” she said cryptically, and Shaw rolled her eyes.

“I'm serious,” Shaw said. “What did you want?”

“I told you,” Root said, stopping when they reached the foot of the bridge. “To make sure you were okay.”

Shaw shook her head. “Well I'm fine, no thanks to you.” She turned on her heel, cursing herself for having followed Root this far at all.

She hadn't walked ten paces when she heard footsteps jogging to catch up. Root sidled back up alongside her, catching her sleeve. “Didn't get to do this last time,” she murmured as Shaw turned in annoyance, a retort hot on her lips.

She pinned Shaw against the railing that separated the walkway from the water and as quick as anything, she kissed Shaw on the mouth. Shaw hated that she followed Root's lead, leaning forward and chasing the gap when Root ran her tongue over Shaw's bottom lip and drew away. Root bit down on her own lip as she smiled somewhat giddily, stepping back and shucking her hands into her pockets.

“Goodbye, Shaw.”

.

Shaw got back to where Cole had parked the van and tossed her bag in the back, trying to act as nonchalantly as possible as she settled into the passenger seat.

“All good?” Cole asked, his voice light. _A little too light_ , Shaw thought.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Let's get outta here. I'm starving.”

Cole's hand was on the keyboard, but he wasn't typing anything. “You took a while getting back.”

Shaw shrugged. “It's a beautiful day.”

There was a very long silence before Cole said, slowly, “You know the comm's been open the whole time, right?”

 _Fuck_. Shaw's hand flew to her ear and sure enough, she hadn't switched off her earpiece. She pulled it out of her ear and folded her arms tightly across her chest.

“There was a Groves in Madrid,” Cole said, as if he were just making a casual observation. Shaw didn't humour him with a response. “Better known as Root? She tasered you and killed our number, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes,” Shaw replied flatly, gaining a sudden interest in buckling her seatbelt. Safety first.

“And she was here—”

_“Yes.”_

“And you two...” her partner continued, but this time, out of the corner of her eye, Shaw could see him peering at her with the tiniest of grins on his face and she slammed the tongue of the belt into the buckle.

“Didn't your mother ever tell you it's rude to eavesdrop,” she snapped, ready to punch him if he said anything more. “Just do whatever is that you do and let's get outta here.”

But Cole didn't move, giving her a long look as she willed him to start the van and drive. “What?” she snapped, after several long seconds of avoiding his stare.

Cole only shrugged. “I just hope you know what you're doing,” he muttered, and finally started entering some code into his laptop.

As Cole updated their mission status over the secure network, Shaw leaned back in her seat and stared out the window. _No_ , she thought morosely, her lips still tingling from Root's kiss, she didn't know what she was doing at all.


	3. Budapest, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo... this is that awkward moment when your WIP doesn't turn out at all the way it's supposed to. It just seemed to come to a natural conclusion from the way it was going. I guess you could read it more as a "Three Times" fic, now. 
> 
> My apologies for the false advertising—but I've enjoyed writing it very much and I hope you enjoy the last two chapters :)

_Why didn't you tell me where she was? Why did you make me go there?_

_She should know._

_He's going to get her killed._

_Not... time._

_Why me? Why choose me, if you're not going to tell me anything?_

_Flight... at... twenty-three... hundred._

_I know._

_Be... careful._

_Thank you. I will._

 

* * *

 

 The latest number was a retired FBI agent, in clandestine talks with some Ukrainians. Not so clandestine if Research had his number, Shaw thought, as she and Cole checked into their flight. She eyed the donut stand on the other side of the waiting lounge with an almost wistful longing and hunkered down at the farthest end of the room so she wouldn't have to look at it.

As though reading her thoughts, Cole held out a granola bar and waved it in her face. Half-eaten. Shaw glared at him and regretted having chowed down her breakfast BLT so early in the morning. It would be about another four hours before the flight crew gave them any food...

She snatched the bar out of Cole's hand and finished it in two bites. “You're welcome,” Cole said as he made himself comfortable, smirking at her because he obviously wanted it punched off his face.

At least he seemed to be somewhat back to his normal self now. Cole had given her a few more snide jabs about Portland since the event, which made Shaw wary of bringing up Root at all when they were together. Shaw had tried to look into Root when she could carve out pockets of time to do so, but it was tough going; apart from her name and a reputation as one of Decima's top hackers, Root was an enigma. In some circles, it was as if she didn't even exist. And computers weren't Shaw's thing at all so she couldn't even hack into stuff to dig further below the surface—that was why she had Cole.

But there was an undercurrent to Cole's comments that Shaw couldn't quite pin down but still left a sour taste in her mouth, making her reluctant to ask for help even though she knew he would. Then again, there was a lot of that sour feeling as of late; she felt almost betrayed by how her mind seemed to constantly flit through her memory banks and spend most of her extraneous thoughts on Root, playing back the night in Madrid and then the kiss by the river. It was getting harder to clear her mind at the end of the day and pulling herself back to a grounded center seemed ever more elusive.

She didn't know why Cole would be so bothered by it, anyway. They didn't have that kind of relationship, and if he ever thought otherwise he was surely aware that nothing could or would happen. Plus, Shaw had seen the missed calls from "Veronica" when he had briefly ducked out of the van one time, the calls that he had later returned very secretively and then kept avoiding Shaw's gaze for the rest of the night. So she suspected Cole was seeing someone or doing _something_ with someone, so it wasn't as if they were each others's only options.

“Thanks,” Shaw grunted, sliding lower into her seat as she crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders. She hated long haul flights like this one, and of course Wilson never sprung for anything better than economy. She wondered what kind of flights Decima sprung for Root, and almost wanted to shoot herself for having the thought at all.

.

District X was overcast and brick, the city turning to autumn as the trees stripped themselves bare and shed their livelihood on the cracked tarmac. She and Cole headed directly for the target location upon leaving the airport, and in the car that they picked up from one of ISA's assets on the ground, they went over the strategy.

Control wanted the data Wingate had, so the plan was for Shaw to clear the area for Cole to head in after and transfer the files.

“Depending on the firewall," Cole said, typing away steadily in the passenger seat, "it shouldn't be too hard but I'll need a few minutes to get through.”

“Piece of cake,” Shaw said, immediately wishing there was actually a piece of cake handy. They'd stopped by a convenience store to stock up, but cake had sadly been left off the docket. She decided they would get some on the way back to the airport. “The map's in the back.”

The meet was in an abandoned industrial plant in a derelict part of the city, having been a brewery one time. The whole area was deserted now, seemingly isolated from the rest of the district. Shaw had outlined their entry and exit paths in red marker pen on a hard copy while on the airplane, much to Cole's amusement. He had watched her squint under the useless light of the overhead panel before whipping out his laptop to reveal that he had one already digitised and mapped out in 3D.

Now, he scoffed at her in mock horror. “Please don't remind me you keep paper with your firearms.”

Shaw shrugged. Paper was a valuable asset. Especially since it looked like they might have to light their own fire waiting in the car, it was getting pretty chilly.

They parked half a street away. It was past dinnertime, and as the sky grew darker, Shaw gnawed on her fingernail and gave her guns a once over while watching for Wingate's arrival.

“I got eyes,” she said shortly after ten, staring into the side mirror as a taxi pulled up across the street and a man with white hair and a bulging autumn coat got out. He paid the driver, who idled for a brief moment before driving away, past where the two of them were parked.

When it was clear, Shaw left Cole in the car and picked the lock around the back of the warehouse that led to the surface level entry to the brewery. Inside, it was dim, and smelled strongly of damp and mould, mingling with the faint residue of hops. Her boots made wet sounds as she stole to the door leading down.

“Ukrainians just pulled up,” Cole said in her earpiece. “Four of them heading your way.”

“Copy,” Shaw muttered, sneaking past a wall of forgotten barrels and crates. Wingate was a hundred yards ahead of her, standing in the middle of the space. Shaw crouched down behind one of the less rotted crates and waited.

.

The Ukrainians entered not long after, and from there on in it was easy pickings for Shaw. There was barely any opportunity for them to exchange fire and in two minutes Shaw tapped her earpiece and said to Cole, “It's clear.”

Retrieving the data was another story. The protocols were more complex than Cole had been expecting, and uploading the patch to get through took fucking ages. Shaw tapped her foot impatiently as she swept the perimeter again while Cole connected his system to Wingate's laptop. “Why can't we just take the whole thing with us?”

“Liability,” Cole answered shortly, which sounded like a bullshit excuse to Shaw. Another one of Control's weird little quirks. She really needed to talk to Hersch or Wilson about that when they got back.

Then, Cole sucked in a sharp breath and starting typing a whole lot faster than he had been before. “What is it?” Shaw asked brusquely, glancing over.

“This is really weird,” Cole replied, but his voice was tense and distant. “There's nothing here.”

“What do you mean, there's nothing—”

“I just got through, but there's literally nothing on here,” he said, turning the laptop so Shaw could see it too. All she saw was a sea of green Matrix-style letters running rapidly down the screen and her eyes glazed over. “This code doesn't mean anything. I could try to decrypt it, but—”

“No time,” Shaw snapped, already uncomfortable with how much time they had spent down there. “Let's just take the laptop and go.”

Cole hesitated. “Cole!” Shaw hollered. “We need to move, now.”

Shaking his head, Cole unplugged his things and quickly packed them back into his bag. Shaw led the way out, gun raised in front of her. The temperature had dropped, and her hairs prickled at the back of her neck. She shook the sensation off.

“Wait,” Shaw hissed just as they neared the exit, thrusting her hand out and stopping Cole in his tracks. She had seen shadows pass by, where the base of the heavy door met the floor.

“What is it?”

“We're not alone.” Shaw pulled her Beretta out of her ankle holster and handed it to Cole. “Stay behind me.”

.

It was eerily silent when Shaw cracked open the door by a hair. Gun muzzle first, she peered out into the sprawling concrete emptiness. “Clear,” she whispered, and stepped out onto the ground level.

A metal object suddenly rolled to her feet, clanking clumsily on the concrete. Shaw recognised it immediately, and kicked it away, but not before the stun grenade detonated and assaulted her senses. “Get back!” she yelled to Cole, but it was impossible to hear anything.

Gunfire greeted them next, and Shaw’s eyes teared as she fired back blindly, hoping to hell Cole was holding his own. There must have been at least half a dozen on the assault team.  She landed a handful of good shots before she ran out of ammo and desperately searched for cover.  Something exploded, sending debris flying through the air and she had just turned to elbow one of the men in the solar plexus when something came flying by and struck her across the jaw, dropping her to her knees.

It was a losing battle, and Shaw was pissed, even as her vision greyed and the world turned into a canted frame. She couldn’t see Cole. She wanted to call out to him, but a red mist emerged from her mouth instead. Her arms didn’t seem to be working so well, either. Her firearm lay just out of reach by her knees.

Then, out of the smoky haze, striding through the hail of bullets and trading them with her own, she saw a figure so silhouetted by the flame that she looked ethereal, a figure out of some religious painting. Every bullet she fired was perfect and found its mark as she pulled the trigger like clockwork under some subconscious directive, and every man fell to his knees before her.

She came to Shaw, pulling her free of a heavy body pinning her down, and hoisted her over a shoulder so angular that Shaw wondered in her delirium if she was feeling the sprout of an angel's wings.

“Sorry I'm late,” Shaw heard her say, in that familiar voice that had grated before but now soothed her like a balm, before her world shifted like the rubble she was being carried over and turned to black.


	4. Budapest, Part 2

When she woke, she was in a hovel of a motel room, the kind where you palmed the receptionist fifty bucks to tell the cops nobody was there. Everything hurt. Bruised ribs, she surmised, mentally taking stock of all her body parts. Maybe a concussion. Nothing was broken, but she suspected she would find swelling and bruising all over when she had a look. Her mouth felt as heavy and thick as mud. She tasted blood on her tongue.

Root was sitting in a ratty armchair to her right, alert and watching her like a hawk. “You're awake,” she said, when Shaw's eyes locked onto hers. “Good.”

Shaw swallowed. Her throat was parched. Root handed her a cup of ice chips that had already half melted. Their fingers brushed as Shaw took the cup, and Root's stiffening did not go unnoticed by her. “How long was I out?” she asked, her voice so hoarse that half the words couldn't come out at all. Flashes of memory came through to the forefront of her mind and a simmering something that she would've classified as rising panic in anyone else began to seep through her breastbone.

Root's half-hearted smile didn't reach her eyes. “How are you feeling?” she asked instead of answering Shaw's question.

“That's a stupid question,” Shaw deadpanned. “How do you think?” She leaned back against the pillows and winced. 

“I think you have a concussion,” Root said, as if Shaw hadn't spoken at all. “You hit your head pretty hard when you fell. I thought you might've ruptured a lung. The blood...” She looked at her hands and then back at Shaw. “But you're the doctor, not me.”

Shaw grunted. "I'm amazed you know your place.” She lifted the covers and watched her toes wiggle one by one, and tentatively rolled her ankles a couple of times. Everything intact, there. She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and stood slowly. 

“Maybe you shouldn't—” Root started to say, but shut herself up before Shaw could even glare at her.

It was dark and drizzling outside. The immediate neighbourhood was unfamiliar to her, none of the crumbling brick facades jogging her memory of where she and Cole had driven through before.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, watching the light rain fall and gleam in the yellow sodium of the streetlights.

.

They had been compromised, Root told her. Cole was dead. Shaw followed the thread of her story with a sinking heart. 

“He was looking into a man named Daniel Aquino,” Root said softly, “You got his number—”

“After he was getting money from Hezbollah,” Shaw finished for her. “I remember. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Cole started asking questions. He wanted to know where the numbers came from; he thought it was just too perfect. He looked into Aquino and—this was the mistake—started talking to the CIA.” Root's mouth quirked up at the edges, but it was a sad smile. “His contact told him that the money had actually come from the US government. It'd been rerouted to look like a Hezbollah deposit.”

“What are you trying to say?” Shaw demanded. “That Research faked Aquino's number?”

“Not Research,” Root replied. “Someone in the Pentagon, most likely the same person who ordered your assassination tonight.”

Shaw ran a hand through her hair, frustrated. “Was he?” she demanded. “Innocent?”

“Does it matter?” 

The retort was hot on her lips but the question made Shaw pause. “It matters if Research is giving us duds,” she said eventually. 

“Research doesn't give 'duds',” Root shot back so quickly and with such venom to her reply that Shaw recoiled slightly in surprise. “Research is never wrong.”

Shaw turned and studied Root as the other woman stood by her shoulder, staring at a vacant space on the windowsill. There was a peculiar quality to her vehement expression. Shaw had seen it before in interrogations—the avoidant gaze, the fidgeting. It was the body language of someone trying to convince themselves of what they were saying just as much as the person they were talking to. 

“What did you do with his body?” Shaw asked. 

Root met her eyes but she looked ashamed, guilty almost. As the silence hung in the air like a knife poised to strike, the rising panic now became like cement that had stopped turning in the mixer, resting heavy on Shaw's chest.

“You just left him there?”

Root looked away. “I couldn't carry both of you.”

She burned, then, with a paroxysm that creeped through her skin and set her nerves alight with a searing flame that made her blood run cold. Her vision grew hazy around the edges, obscured by the blindness that so often accompanies rage and she struck out without checking her aim, fist flying through air and connecting with brick and plaster. Then there was a tight grunt as her punch landed on something soft, something that gave way to her raw, red knuckles, and when the rose-tinted mist lifted she realised that that something had been Root. 

Root, who was watching her impassively even as blood oozed from the lip that Shaw had just split. Root, who saved her instead of Cole, who somehow _knew_ things before they happened, who could execute a dozen trained assets without blinking. Shaw shook her head, trying to clear the distortion in her brain, tried to reconcile the beaten woman in front of her with the angel who had lifted her out of the quarry.

Root raised a hand and daubed at the blood with her sleeve. It came away and stood out on the white cotton like a surreal red stain that wicked steadily and relentlessly up the cuff. 

“Don't,” Shaw said numbly as Root went to wipe the blood away again, “you'll make it worse.”

Root didn't say a word, only pulled Shaw's face to hers and kissed her deep. It was soft, tender, and Root brushed her thumb against Shaw's cheek as she laved her bottom lip with her tongue. Maybe it was the guilt she felt, the metallic grief she could taste on Root's mouth, or maybe it was the sorrow bubbling through the rage, all the emotions that she'd never quite felt so acutely before, but it felt to Shaw that Root was apologising for letting Cole go, for having the strength to only pull her out. She pulled away, her head spinning. 

Root stood where she was, hands by her side, waiting. The look on her face was haunting. In the pallid light striking her features Shaw finally saw how tired Root was, saw the lines that weren't there before etched below her eyes, and saw the pain there mirrored in her own. The shine was dulled a little, but they were alive. Both of them were alive.

“I don't want your apologies,” she bit out, choking down the fist in her chest and shoving Root away, where she stumbled against the bed. “You can't bring him back.”

But Root only threaded her fingers in Shaw's hair and mouthed more apologies down the curve of Shaw's neck, telegraphed her regret along the line of her jaw. Shaw bowed her head and let her, shut her eyes and concentrated on how good it felt, and tried to forget just for that night that Cole wasn't coming back in the morning.

.

Her heart pounded out a rhythm unfamiliar to her as Root clutched at her shoulders, wrapping her legs tightly around Shaw's body as she gasped and threw her head back. Shaw dipped her head and laved her tongue along the tight cord of Root's shoulder and neck and Root moaned into her ear, her breath hot and damp and felt like flames against her skin. Shaw felt like the rest of her was on fire, too, burning away the protestations of her body. She trapped Root between her body and the mattress, rucking up the sheets as they moved faster against one another but it never felt quite fast enough. Shaw fisted the pillow in desperation as Root pushed a third finger into her, lifting her hips and pressing harder into her, and the pleasure-pain was a burn that raced down to every fibre of her being until Shaw felt like she had been pulled apart and knitted back, with Root as the singularity that held her together.

Later, Shaw held Root down with a forearm over Root's stomach, feeling oddly angry and intent as she sucked and bit the inside of Root's thigh, teasing with her tongue while Root strained and pulled against her, quiet apart from a soft cry when she came.

They lay next to each other, tangled in the sheets, their breathing heavy in the otherwise quiet room. Shaw's legs felt like jelly, and she shivered involuntarily. Perhaps taking it as a sign of chill, Root turned into Shaw's body, tightening her hand into a fist where it rested on Shaw's stomach. They didn't cuddle. Shaw didn't know whether she preferred it that way or not.

Root fell asleep quickly, but Shaw stayed awake for much longer, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how Root had become the lighthouse to her distant sea when she hadn't been paying attention. She thought that she should move, make some distance between them, but sleep caught her unawares and in the morning when she woke, the sweat had dried and the bed was empty save for herself. Root was nowhere to be found.

Shaw swallowed, the room seeming so much starker and cold in the grey dawn. She winced as the sunlight glinting through the cloud and off the metal roofs of the buildings outside the window struck her eye, and told herself she wouldn't miss Root at all. 

.

She went back for Cole's body later that morning. She felt a pang of guilt for having waited this long, but in truth she could not bear to even go back at all. She didn't want to see his body there, broken and bent and riddled with bullets. _You fucking idiot_ , she thought, turning her collar up against the biting cold. 

She wondered what Wilson would say to his parents. If he would say anything at all. Missing in action, maybe. Killed in the line of duty. Your son was the best we had. We won't have another analyst like him.

What was it like to have family? To have people who knew you were out there, who knew you existed, breathed and lived and loved just like they did. Who would wonder what you were doing while you were aiming a sniper rifle at the heart of man whose face you wouldn't think of again after the next ten minutes had passed.

Shaw rounded the corner to the plant and stopped dead in her tracks. Half the face of the building was gone, the outer wall shattered and exposed to the elements. Twisted rods of steel pointed at her through the boulders of cement and brick lying on the ground.

She drew her gun and crept around the crumbling facade, picking her way through and over mounds of rubble to get to where she and Cole had been last night. She braced herself as she neared the chaos of bodies and firearms, discarded shells of ammunition and blood spatter decorating the floor. There were so many of them, dressed in full tactical armor. Aware that time was not on her side in this, Shaw began to work quickly, methodically moving through the mess to find Cole's body. 

It wasn't there. 

Shaw choked on the thick, cloying dust as she shifted the debris, leaving nothing unturned. Still, she found only the dead faces of strange men staring lifelessly back at her.

 _Root_ , she thought. _Root did this._

She tried to tamp down the growing frustration as she ran back out into fresher air, the rage yearning to burst out of her like a phoenix. In the still and quiet cold there was a foreign sound that broke the silence. Shaw turned, tracing the source.

Ten feet away from her, in a box of warped metal and dirty glass that was cracked and defaced with graffiti, a payphone was ringing.


End file.
